To be sure, the candidate

To be sure, the candidate that is telling you the things anyone least wants to hear is telling you the truth. Because, if it wasn't the truth he would tell you what you want to hear to get your vote like all the other candidates are doing. Governor Pat Quinn is the only politician I hold in high regard, because he has done more for the citizens of this state in and out of public office than any other politician in the last half century, much to the detriment of his popularity with other politicians, even from his own party. My vote for Blagojevich was to put Pat Quinn in position to save this state when the time came. After reducing the House of Representatives by 1/3, supporting the creation of the Citizens' Utility Board (CUB), and sincere efforts to have the state adequately fund education as is required in our 1970 Illinois State Constitution, his commitment to the citizens of this state is obvious to any fair minded person. No other politician has been as selflessly committed to improving conditions for the citizens of this state during my lifetime.

Is it not necessary to

Is it not necessary to provide links to copy & pasted articles, or is it just a 'choice' thing? Aren't there copyright laws to consider?

Just curious...

Here's one of many worthwhile

Here's one of many worthwhile reads about where the "money = speech" mess is taking us:

"norwegianity.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/a-great-wind-is-blowing"

"Follow the money" used to be a common cliche in uncovering corruption. We can't even do that anymore. I personally don't hold out much hope for us as a nation.

Seems to me that if we want

Seems to me that if we want to keep our representative democracy and reduce corruption, we should randomly select our representatives similar to jury duty so that they more truly represent us in demographics, life experiences, etc. Have them serve one weekend a month, two weeks a year like guard duty. Pay their travel expenses and provide them a full time staffer and pooled resources (researchers, law writers, etc). You'd eliminate a lot of staffing costs, disgraceful campaigning, partisan posturing and bickering, election costs, career politicians, and pork. A random group with no job preservation conflict of interest would be more apt to vote in the best interests of their fellow citizens.

Or we capitalize on this technology stuff and go to direct democracy.

OPINION PREPOSTEROUS PRETENSE

OPINION

PREPOSTEROUS PRETENSE OF POPULISM OR
DELUSION OF REALITY?

This year many political ad producers are presenting the recurrent theme of "Us vs. Them". The concept that any politician could be one of "Us" is ludicrous unless one is also a politician. To engage in the unseemly profession of politics in the first place, all politicians are required to sacrifice far more of their personal standards of honesty, integrity, and character than any of "Us" would be willing to sacrifice, just to associate with other politicians. So, recognize that the whole phony pitch of "Us vs. Them" doesn't refer to one politician or another, but all politicians vs. the rest of "US". Judge rather which one of "Them" is more likely to represent a majority of your views on issues which they are likely to address. No one will agree with every opinion held by someone with an intelligent independent mind, least of all the artificial politically motivated platforms of a national party. Politicians, or rather the political professionals that actually manipulate these often misguided souls, create nonexistent issues that appeal to the emotions, more often negative than positive, in order to dupe gullible voters into thinking their candidate will ease their sorry plight. But, there is still one place where they unwittingly betray themselves. Though the Supreme Court has tried to enable all the special interests, big corporations, and multinational organizations to hide their hidden agendas to complete the takeover of our government, they still left us one clue to unravel their scheme. OPEN DISCLOSURE, FOLLOW THE MONEY. Examine the political material for clues indicating from where the money is coming. Ads directly from a political candidate indicate support from individuals, special interests, corporations, and lobbyists that donate under election regulation limitations, to further their diverse concerns. While politicians are not "US", many of the individuals who support a politician would qualify as "US", and would share our concerns and goals. Examination of election contribution filings would clearly indicate whether one would consider those contributors "US". Whereas, ads from other sources with ulterior motives, hidden or blatant, indicate their primary concern probably is NOT "US", unless one is among the privileged millionaire class of "US" that are funding those self serving ads. Examine the filings for those ads and consider which group of contributors is most likely to share your concerns and goals. If you are unable to identify those contributors, you may thank the Republicans for blocking passage of the DISCLOSE ACT in the Senate recently to prevent transparency in the funding of election of our public officials. Their masters demanded their right to spend unlimited amounts of your hard earned money, that you spent for their products and services, to control your thoughts and your lives without your knowledge of their complicity in the misery to which they are subjecting you. In most locations only one vote is allowed, so be selfish and avoid having your vote bought by dishonest ads that will directly harm you and the rest of "US" in the present and in the future.

It is fortunate for politicians and corporate media that the Federal Communications Commission regulations seem to be suspended during election years. Because, the "Truth in Advertising Principle" would remove a full 95% of political ads from our viewing and listening pleasure, besides depriving corporate media of their biennial gold rush. There may be a clue in those media bottom lines why they focus on the divisions and acrimony in politics, rather than the common solutions to our nation's problems. During the Greatest Recession since the Great Depression, this disgraceful waste of scarce resources clearly demonstrates that Big Corporate Money will buy any politician willing to sell out the citizens who they are elected to represent. Despite the Supreme Court's catastrophic contention, multinational corporations lack the qualities necessary to be deemed human, such as honesty, truthfulness, respect, fairness, compassion, charity, caring, or even justice. Their only concern is the bottom line, and that concern only extends as far as it affects their millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses, rarely including concern for their consumers or shareholders, who enable them to abscond with those undeserved profits. With this singular focus on their own well being, corporate executives would not be gambling obscene amounts of money on these politicians if they didn't fully expect a sizable return on their investment, inevitably at the voters expense. Charging exorbitant prices for products and services, then using consumer generated money to lobby against the consumers' interests politically, perpetuates a Reverse Robin Hood philosophy of stealing from the poor to make the rich even richer. To reduce the inordinate influence of corporate money in our government, one suggestion would be that as a condition of FCC licensing, media be required to provide a reasonable level of complimentary air time for any politician that met a minimum level of legitimacy to serve in the office for which they were campaigning. This would demonstrably uphold any of the Supreme Court's issues concerning "Free Speech". Until some such resolution is implemented Big Corporate Money will influence every politician either directly of indirectly. Politicians do not have a time machine, so every minute required of them to raise funds to broadcast their message is a minute they are unavailable to address the multitude of problems facing their constituents. In the case of an incumbent, they have to dedicate time beyond the responsibilities of their office to meet the demands of our current electoral process. For a challenger it is very difficult to acquire the funds needed to overcome the incumbent's name recognition advantage. Politicians have to weigh the benefits of time spent addressing the voters personally for small contributions, against the time saved by selling out for the big special interests' payoffs. Our Democratic senatorial candidate, Alexi Giannoulias, has uniquely committed to decline corporate PAC or federal lobbyist contributions, to retain the best interests of the citizens as his highest priority. Having met and talked to him in person, I can attest that he is meeting with his constituents and small contributors rather than selling out to corporate special interests. While Democratic politicians are unavoidably influenced by this corporate interference, Republicans are not influenced, they just do what they are told by their corporate owners, unless 2 of their special interests are in diametric opposition, in which case they might have to think which one makes larger contributions. The missing elements in that decision making process are the citizens they are supposed to represent and the country and society as a whole. One need look no farther than the failed legislation to reform our national health care to see the result. If the private for profit health insurance industry hadn't kept 2 firm hands on their Republican leash, the Democrats would have passed a bill that would have kept health care from bankrupting our citizens and government and would have facilitated creation of millions of jobs needed to sustain the aging baby boomer generation, instead of compromising away health reform with the independent radicals within their own party to merely reform insurance industry abuses.

Another recurrent theme with political ad producers this year is to examine their candidate's weaknesses and vulnerabilities, then accuse their opponent of the misjudgments and mistakes their own candidate has made to direct the dissatisfaction of the undiscerning voter toward the solution and away from their problem candidate. Many Democratic ads are guilty of misrepresentation of the facts, but such would be a generous description of most Republican ads, many of which are outright baldfaced lies. But, in their defense it is necessary to present negative ads attacking the Democratic opponents because they can't afford to have a gullible electorate remember that they suffer a prominent lack of positives exiting their reign in the midst of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression of the 1930's. The glaring reason why one has seen so few positive Republican ads is that on the list of important positive accomplishments for which we do thank them in the last decade, after keeping us safe domestically comes a period. After their abysmal stewardship of the economy, their leaders and candidates contend that the stimulus programs, which were initiated during their tenure, didn't create jobs. The hundreds of miles of new pavement and all the new bridges I see in my area must have appeared magically when the tooth fairy waved her magic wand, because the Republicans swear the stimulus didn't create jobs. The incredible effectiveness of the stimulus program affords them this delusion of reality because it prevented the 25% unemployment rate as happened during the Depression, which could have resulted if they had remained in control. Ironically, legislators find it convenient to blame members of the executive branch of government for massive deficit spending, ignoring the fact that it is their legislative branch that authorizes all budgets and nearly all spending. As frequently happens in politics, when their own failures become obvious to the general public those who held the positions to affect society positively, choose to blame those who had little or nothing to do with those mistakes. Such hypocrisy defies comprehension as is clearly seen in our U. S. Senatorial campaign, where the candidate that was "serving" in Washington, ignoring common sense and the warnings of experts, while the economy was going down the drain losing trillions of dollars of value creating a world wide recession, has the audacity to blame his opponent for losses that resulted from his own negligence. Forgiveness for this delusion of reality may be appropriate considering an infrequent acquaintance with veracity, evidenced by the content of his election campaign ads.

Our gubernatorial race provides the other obvious example where a legislator serving in the legislature that approved the spending and deficits that led to the most desperate economic conditions in our state's history, disingenuously tries to blame his opponent for the failures of the legislature of which he was no part. The governor's line item veto only allows saving money that the legislators have already approved spending. A member of a dysfunctional legislature whose minority party endorsed him by less than 200 votes statewide, may need to run a snide disgraceful campaign to mask his total inadequacy to represent this proud but beleaguered state. The issue of early release of nonviolent criminals accentuates the hypocrisy of the misrepresentation in Brady's ad. Governor Pat Quinn ended a preexisting policy intended to save taxpayers' money by releasing qualified prisoners 2 months early. There was not a question of whether or not they would be released, only when. So, with the potential that these early releasees might commit crimes before they would otherwise be released, Governor Quinn cancelled the practice. Ironically, Brady's 10% proposed cuts would likely require such programs be reinstated or other programs would require larger cuts in order to fulfill his campaign rhetoric. Ludicrously Brady tries to link Governor Quinn to Blagojevich when everyone knows they were not even on speaking terms, and Quinn called for Blagojevich to resign when the FBI allegations became public. Even more laughable are attempts to tie Quinn to the Chicago Democratic political machine, considering the disdain they have demonstrated toward him over the decades and the total lack of regard he has given them. When he catches up to reality he will realize the "clean break" for which Brady's ad asks took place nearly 2 years ago with the unanimous impeachment of Blagojevich which Pat Quinn fully supported. Criticizing Quinn for reducing his staff budget by giving his remaining staff raises rather than filling positions with the additional expense of employee benefits really demonstrates there is no depth to which Brady will not stoop to misrepresent the facts and mislead the voters to distract them from his lack of concern for the citizens of this state. By comparison, one remembers that Pat Quinn was among those that spearheaded the reduction of the Illinois house by 33 1/3% decades ago, resulting in sizable savings for the state in staff expenses. He was also a strong advocate for creation of the Citizens' Utility Board (CUB), an organization that vigorously fights utility company rate increases on behalf of the citizens of this state. He also endorsed non-binding referendums to shift education funding away from property taxes to income taxes, which I believe is essential to the salvation of education in this state. Despite a life in politics, Pat Quinn has been the ultimate outsider accomplishing what most ordinary citizens wish they could do when he threw 1/3 of the Illinois House of Representatives out of office by reducing the size of that body. These activities on behalf of the citizens of our state have not enhanced his popularity with conventional politicians, because he tells the citizens what he truthfully believes, not what they want to hear, about what is best for all the citizens, not just the wealthy and powerful. I even voted for Blagojevich specifically hoping that he would move on so Quinn could become governor. It is extremely disreputable to criticize the most humble and honest governor we have had in half a century just because he can't repair the damage caused by convicted politicians over decades in only 2 years. He has not pushed a 40% pay increase for legislators as our beloved former governor, Jim Edgar did when he was a legislator. He hasn't displayed a lavish life style as James Thompson did during his term as governor. He hasn't been the subject of criminal prosecutions as 4 of his predecessors have been. Upon his inauguration, he proudly occupied the Executive Mansion in Springfield to serve the citizens of this state in the capitol where the Governor belongs. Though a legitimate concern, his incredible record of selflessly improving conditions for the citizens of this state and his honesty and candor lead me to believe his call for an income tax increase, with the proper limitations and conditions, is preferable to having the state's credit rating lowered again, and having to pay exorbitant interest rates to the banks, rather than spending that money on education, health care, or roads and bridges to benefit and protect the citizens of this state. With the increase in the personal exemption, the tax increase would have a minimal affect on those that would otherwise be detrimentally impacted by it, and the majority of the rest might actually benefit directly and indirectly from state government paying their bills in a timely manner to save thousands of jobs and essential public services. Prolonging the state's fiscal crisis will not prompt any of the necessary developments for its resolution to be realized any sooner. Only those who wish our citizens to suffer higher interest payments would benefit from prolonging resolution of our fiscal crisis. While I do not agree with every decision he has made, and have emailed my opinion to his office, I do not believe there is a politician in this state that would ever work more tirelessly in the best interests of the citizens of this state than Governor Pat Quinn. Comparing their records of accomplishments, that a race even exists for Governor this year, clearly demonstrates that special interests and big corporations will spend any amount of money to control the minds and the lives of an inattentive electorate for their own self serving objectives. Judging from past experience, one can be assured that any politician that promises to spend less, tax less, and borrow less is flat out lying to continue serving their corporate masters rather than the citizens they are supposed to represent and serve.

In the spirit of disclosure I was a lifelong Republican, proud to have lived briefly on 8th Street in Springfield as did Abraham Lincoln. But, after a personal conversation with my congressman concerning the health care crisis, I was ashamed to realize that the hijacking of our once proud and honorable party was complete and that it had been totally co-opted by big corporate money and special interests to the detriment of every citizen in this nation. Rather than being the champions for the causes of the weak and disenfranchised as during the Civil War, Republicans now fight to maintain the status quo with astronomical medical expenses and unaffordable insurance premiums, essentially creating a protection racket enslaving the economically disadvantaged to pay private for profit insurance companies everything or die. Currently, with 45,000 dying annually for lack of insurance coverage, the greatest enemy to this nation is the greed of our corporate society and the obstruction of solutions by their "public servants".

I whole heartedly commend President Bush for preventing another domestic casualty from foreign elements following the most despicable attack since Pearl Harbor and the worst incursion of our mainland since 1815. No one could honestly say that on September 12, 2001, they knew anyone could accomplish that, and I don't think anyone else could have. Only 9 months into his administration his presidency was fully occupied by that primary responsibility to the detriment of internal domestic issues. Preoccupied by a potential external threat and influenced by fundamental political beliefs, the administration ignored warnings from experts, allowed political allies to influence deregulation, and were guilty of inaction to prevent a financial collapse of the entire world economy. In the midst of catastrophic damage control, the 2008 electorate justifiably transferred control to the Democratic Party who expressed a greater focus on the economy than foreign policy. I was proud to vote for John McCain because I had no confidence that Barack Obama's policies could maintain the safety we had enjoyed under President Bush. But, he has maintained a reasonable level of safety, while addressing issues that are destroying the lives of millions of Americans. From day one the Republican response to a decisive defeat has been to punish our citizens and imperil our nation's future by obstructing for political gain by preventing the Democrats from improving most of the crises that the Republicans created. Reflecting the perverted "Win at all cost or I don't want to play" attitude corrupting our society, the Republicans coerced and intimidated all their senators to oppose unanimously most of the solutions to our worst problems, even measures that they had previously proposed themselves. Rather than represent the citizens that were paying their salary by contributing to the solutions, they made themselves irrelevant by neglecting the task they were elected to perform, thus, BECOMING THE PROBLEM. At the expense of every citizen, they made a reprehensible political decision that the voters would forget their catastrophic failures, and would reelect them to repeat their policies, as long as they could prevent the Democrats from demonstrating any progress. There is an adage referencing the foolishness of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. There has been a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 30 years, which I fully supported, but the fortunes of the vast majority in this nation have not increased proportionate to the fortunes of those funding these special interest groups' ads. So, if one thinks that trend is going to change by reelecting those that promise to return to the failed policies that created the problems previously, prepare for another decade of unacceptable unemployment, insurance industry abuse, bank industry exploitation, credit card fees, bankruptcies, foreclosures, unaffordable health care, continued national decline, and the rest of the hardships that vote will bring. I have always contended that we have the best government that money can buy, and that we get the government that we deserve, because we cast the votes. If you really wish to reward the selfish interests of those that ignore the well being of others, BE CAREFUL FOR WHAT YOU WISH, BECAUSE YOU REALLY SHOULD FEAR GETTING WHAT YOU WANT!